My last week at the Science Radio unit and time for me to try and edit some of the recordings I made a couple of weeks ago. I do some sound editing for my day job but this is a whole other kettle of fish. None of the programs do what I think they should and a lot of this week was spent accidentally deleting things or trying to copy or cut the same section of audio multiple times! This was actually something I'd hoped I'd learn a lot more about but one thing I have learned is that audio recorded "in the field" is really different to that recorded in my lab under carefully controlled conditions.
Having collected audio under four headings while I was at my conference, I ended up editing segments and putting together a story for just one of these headings. One of them as I say was pretty plain to me, even, that it wouldn't really be usable as it wasn't very exciting to listen to. One of them I thought was interesting but what ended up being really useful was having the conversations with producers about whether it could be interesting, what could be interesting about it, and why it might not be really. The Hook, as Cat is also finding out about. I did edit that audio down a bit and passed it over to the Africa Service who might end up using some of it, but I'm not holding my breath.
But constructing the story which we're hoping will go out on Health Check was great - really challenging, really interesting, and slightly frustrating in that I knew more or less exactly how I wanted it to sound but couldn't get it to work - and then what I wanted to say never came out right either!
I had recorded myself asking the questions and the two scientists, plus the young people from the street kids' theatre, and I have to say I'd assumed that the questions I recorded would be used as well. But it doesn't really work out that way, especially when you need to rework things to make a shorter and easier-to-listen-to story. The other thing that hadn't really occurred to me was that if your interviewee says something in quite a long-winded way, or says an important thing, followed by a rambly anecdote, and then finishes off the important thing, you're going to have to summarise what they said. So it takes a lot of the following:
Listening to what you've got
Deciding on the overall story
Working out what you can get from the audio that will tell the story
Working out what else you'll need to add
Writing the links
Working out if what the interviewee said really fits with your link
Working out if you've said anything in the background that is unclear or just plain wrong
And then finally recording the links!
Which of course is a learning curve in itself. I am highly aware of my personal tendency to talk much too fast - and my poor students are too. I tend to panic when confronted with a long piece of prose I have to read and try and read it all in one go. Big mistake! Sloooow down... and put more expression into it... and smile... and write in your pauses...
So this story, which I'll link to when I know when it's going out, has a news trailer that should go out the same day on World Service News, also including me. So if/when that goes out I'll be glued to Listen Again.
Although I was involved with the main programme I've been working on, Material World, this week, I ended up working really hard on the other story and didn't go over for the recording. I had been interviewing one of the amateur scientists for So You Want To Be A Scientist who was getting very relaxed at doing interviews, but was a bit nervous - so I made the production assistant promise to hold her hand!
It is pretty interesting seeing the programme recorded so I will try and get back there when I'm back in London in a few weeks' time - apparently there is a free bus from White City to Broadcasting House. I also polished off the notes for the two upcoming issues of Material World this week, though (sneak preview) the poor producers then had to contact me to find out where one of the sets of notes was. I could have sworn I had put it in a public drive but you know what happens when you swear you know where something is...
More in a couple of weeks' time when I am back from my sojourn in the day job and am at News Online. So far, this has been one of the most interesting and exciting things I've done recently, and everyone's been really friendly and helpful. Although you end up getting your writing slashed, edited, and critiqued - no-one is nearly as rude as the infamous Reviewer 2.
05 August, 2010
02 August, 2010
Week 2 1/2 - In which my friends appear on the radio
As I blogged earlier, with the programme I've mainly been working on it can be a little while before stories make it out there. I spotted a press release about a story I knew something about and (perhaps because I spoke so clearly and intelligently about it, perhaps because it also appealed to him, or perhaps because he could see I was potty about it and there was no shutting me up) one of the producers let me loose on it. Unlike the other stories I've been working on - including other ones on psychology - I do know all the ins and outs and minor details of this one, so this one came with major warnings about not getting technical and making sure it was all accessible to the general listener.
To start off with we were thinking we'd interview the author of the paper, plus someone who is in the US and does related brain imaging work. But the author is in the North of England - and wasn't at first thinking of coming down to London for the programme - which meant that both of the interviewees would be on a line. It's possible to do that but it's not ideal and you can usually tell. As an aside, I didn't go into the studio for this week's recording but listened to it while it was on - and one of the interviewees was in a studio and kept bumping the mike - it was really obvious, at least to me.
So the plan then was to get a friend/colleague of mine, who is a really chatty and enthusiastic person, who had gushed to me about how great the atricle was, and who works in London, to appear - while the author would be in the Newcastle studio. But in the end everything worked out even better, as the author came down for the day from Newcastle.
I wrote questions for both of them, rang them up and took down their answers - with dire warnings about "forget it's me, pretend it's your granny, or you're showing a school kid round the department, blah blah" - they were both very good when they were talking to me. They were extremely excellent when they came on the show (though I know the Newcastle researcher was a little nervous, she ended up making a joke that was, I think, better than the presenter's) and a good time was had by all.
A lot of the rest of the week was spent trying to find stories for future programmes, again. We had a couple of leads, one of which was a story about fossils, and in fact was research done by someone who'll be doing the same placement as me in a few weeks' time. The producer was fairly sure it would be a very popular story though - it's no good running something that everyone else has run, especially if they do it on a Monday and your show is on a Thursday. This turned out to be the case. Fortunately for everyone, the researcher was bored of going on the radio!
Another one was a story about marine life that was very cool - but there were two problems. One was the same as the fossil story - too much likely media coverage. And the other was the same as the bacteria painting - too visual.
So, I ended up researching yet another story - which isn't out yet. But I'll give you a taster. It's quite a cool story and though it's a psychology story, it's about science in general. I saw an article I really liked, on someone else's blog, and the producer said "hmm, interesting, bit philosophical, and really, stop plugging psychology already! is it topical?". The story was only out last month so that's OK on our programme, and then I spotted a book in the huge pile we have in the office which was by another psychologist, also out last month, and very relevant.
So, I got in touch with the first guy and then waited to see if I'd hear from him - he's in the US. And although working on science radio over the summer is great in one way, because weird and wacky stories get on, in another way it's bloomin' frustrating. How dare scientists take holidays! How dare US universities have 3 month summer breaks?
(Incidentally, if you ever send a book for review to a scientific journal - and I knew this already as I used to do reviews editing - probably about a 1 in 4 chance it will get read and reviewed. And half of them aren't relevant for the journal, so if it's relevant, let's say 1 in 2. If you send it to a media outlet? well let's just say there's a very very long shelf of unread books here...)
To start off with we were thinking we'd interview the author of the paper, plus someone who is in the US and does related brain imaging work. But the author is in the North of England - and wasn't at first thinking of coming down to London for the programme - which meant that both of the interviewees would be on a line. It's possible to do that but it's not ideal and you can usually tell. As an aside, I didn't go into the studio for this week's recording but listened to it while it was on - and one of the interviewees was in a studio and kept bumping the mike - it was really obvious, at least to me.
So the plan then was to get a friend/colleague of mine, who is a really chatty and enthusiastic person, who had gushed to me about how great the atricle was, and who works in London, to appear - while the author would be in the Newcastle studio. But in the end everything worked out even better, as the author came down for the day from Newcastle.
I wrote questions for both of them, rang them up and took down their answers - with dire warnings about "forget it's me, pretend it's your granny, or you're showing a school kid round the department, blah blah" - they were both very good when they were talking to me. They were extremely excellent when they came on the show (though I know the Newcastle researcher was a little nervous, she ended up making a joke that was, I think, better than the presenter's) and a good time was had by all.
A lot of the rest of the week was spent trying to find stories for future programmes, again. We had a couple of leads, one of which was a story about fossils, and in fact was research done by someone who'll be doing the same placement as me in a few weeks' time. The producer was fairly sure it would be a very popular story though - it's no good running something that everyone else has run, especially if they do it on a Monday and your show is on a Thursday. This turned out to be the case. Fortunately for everyone, the researcher was bored of going on the radio!
Another one was a story about marine life that was very cool - but there were two problems. One was the same as the fossil story - too much likely media coverage. And the other was the same as the bacteria painting - too visual.
So, I ended up researching yet another story - which isn't out yet. But I'll give you a taster. It's quite a cool story and though it's a psychology story, it's about science in general. I saw an article I really liked, on someone else's blog, and the producer said "hmm, interesting, bit philosophical, and really, stop plugging psychology already! is it topical?". The story was only out last month so that's OK on our programme, and then I spotted a book in the huge pile we have in the office which was by another psychologist, also out last month, and very relevant.
So, I got in touch with the first guy and then waited to see if I'd hear from him - he's in the US. And although working on science radio over the summer is great in one way, because weird and wacky stories get on, in another way it's bloomin' frustrating. How dare scientists take holidays! How dare US universities have 3 month summer breaks?
(Incidentally, if you ever send a book for review to a scientific journal - and I knew this already as I used to do reviews editing - probably about a 1 in 4 chance it will get read and reviewed. And half of them aren't relevant for the journal, so if it's relevant, let's say 1 in 2. If you send it to a media outlet? well let's just say there's a very very long shelf of unread books here...)
Week 2 - In which I stick microphones up people's noses
A conference would usually be a good opportunity to record some interviews of research that's just getting published, but this was even better because the unit I'm working in does World Service and anything coming out of Africa is particularly interesting. I browsed the conference programme and chose 3 topics that might be interesting and for each of them managed to get interviews with both researchers and normal people - the latter for most cases courtesy of an extremely friendly and nice Africa Service reporter based there.
I ended up interviewing 5 researchers - of which 4 were very easy to talk to and sounded quite down to earth, though they waffled no end, repeated themselves, overlapped themselves... you name it... thankfully I'm not expected to edit the audio, or at least not do the fine stuff.
One researcher was I'm afraid to say reeeeely boring and ended up sounding like he was lecturing me - I probably could have got a bit out of it but there wasn't really as much of a story as there could have been. That was a shame as to go with that one I and the BBC man chased around Lusaka trying to find a child selling things on the streets and ended up being chased out of the market, and finding a boy selling doughnuts, who turned out to be pretty good on the recording.
The other two pairs of interviewees both worked out pretty well, as did their "counterpart" people-on-the-street. It was great fun tracking down a grandmother for one of the stories - we asked one nice old lady selling fruit but she didn't want to be recorded on the street, and in the end found a lady living in an area with some smaller houses, who was looking after her disabled husband. We wanted to buy her a present so went for some food for her dinner, and a notebook and pen for her littlest boy. She had previously been looking after five grandchildren too, but thankfully now they are all with other relatives.
I also really enjoyed running round our conference dinner interviewing the entertainers, a group of kids who perform and work with street children - they are all of course dying to be on the radio as they are actORS darling, and hopefully at least one or two of them will get to be heard - of course the magic words "I'm from the BBC" open all kinds of doors.
Lusaka at this time of year is in the middle of winter - after a nice week's break in Greece and warm and humid London, I was pretty freezing! I had fortunately packed one wool jumper and though it was about 25C in the afternoons I ended up wearing my jumper till lunchtime every day and all evening.
I ended up interviewing 5 researchers - of which 4 were very easy to talk to and sounded quite down to earth, though they waffled no end, repeated themselves, overlapped themselves... you name it... thankfully I'm not expected to edit the audio, or at least not do the fine stuff.
One researcher was I'm afraid to say reeeeely boring and ended up sounding like he was lecturing me - I probably could have got a bit out of it but there wasn't really as much of a story as there could have been. That was a shame as to go with that one I and the BBC man chased around Lusaka trying to find a child selling things on the streets and ended up being chased out of the market, and finding a boy selling doughnuts, who turned out to be pretty good on the recording.
The other two pairs of interviewees both worked out pretty well, as did their "counterpart" people-on-the-street. It was great fun tracking down a grandmother for one of the stories - we asked one nice old lady selling fruit but she didn't want to be recorded on the street, and in the end found a lady living in an area with some smaller houses, who was looking after her disabled husband. We wanted to buy her a present so went for some food for her dinner, and a notebook and pen for her littlest boy. She had previously been looking after five grandchildren too, but thankfully now they are all with other relatives.
I also really enjoyed running round our conference dinner interviewing the entertainers, a group of kids who perform and work with street children - they are all of course dying to be on the radio as they are actORS darling, and hopefully at least one or two of them will get to be heard - of course the magic words "I'm from the BBC" open all kinds of doors.
Lusaka at this time of year is in the middle of winter - after a nice week's break in Greece and warm and humid London, I was pretty freezing! I had fortunately packed one wool jumper and though it was about 25C in the afternoons I ended up wearing my jumper till lunchtime every day and all evening.
28 July, 2010
In which I pretend to be a journalist
I'm currently spending a few weeks as a British Science Association Media Fellow (see here), one hopes reaping lots of rewards for my loyal reader in improving my skills at communicating science to the general public.
I started at the BBC Science Radio Unit about 2 weeks ago - mainly working on Material World, with side forays into Health Check and Science in Action. Material World is a live programme which is broadcast on Thursday afternoons, meaning Fridays are really quiet and the week ramps up from there. The first week here, the producers were treating me really gently but it still felt quite scary.
With a programme like this guests are interviewed first by us (that's the producers and random know-nothings like me and another work experience person), after we've written a list of relevant questions. We take notes on what the guest has to say, pass it on to the presenter, and a script for the programme is written - then you have to hope that what you've asked makes sense to the presenter, and that the interviewee gives roughly the same answers, and isn't too nervous!
The first interview I was involved with was with an MP, now, it will be pretty easy for you to find out who it was, but I won't mention her by name. In typical politician fashion, she didn't say very much to me (or on the programme) and was full of clichés. Even the presenter, who prides himself on having a way with words, couldn't think of a synonym for "skilled up" once she'd said it to me three times and him twice. As I say, it felt quite scary to have that responsibility but it wasn't a huge job in reality.
Quite a lot of what I’ve been doing has been looking around to see what news is out there. I usually enjoy reading science blogs and feeds and it’s great to have this be temporarily part of my day job – hearing what’s new, getting press releases before things are out on the web, trawling feeds for something new and interesting. A lot of what is actually really new and interesting doesn’t make great radio, unfortunately. Did you know Alexander Fleming painted with bacteria, for example? But pictures aren't that great on radio.
Some of the stories end up being researched quite a while in advance. In my first week I started researching two more stories for Material World, one of which has gone out at the time of writing and one of which will be out in a couple of weeks’ time. The first one was my own “spot”, in fact of a colleague whose really interesting paper was about to come out – I raved about how cool the research was, the producers said “yeah, go for it”, and I talked to the main researcher, and after a bit of indecision also decided to ask another colleague on. The preliminary work on that was in my first week here but there’s more to this story so I’ll leave that for another entry.
After my first week I was due to go to a conference in Lusaka, Zambia – so I was given a digital recorder, tiny, and a microphone, huge, and some quick instructions on how to use it, and some tips for recording (make sure the background isn’t too noisy but isn’t too quiet, push the microphone right up people’s noses, check the volume level), and the email and phone no of the Africa Service’s employee there. I have been to
I'll try and write another entry on My Adventures in Lusaka shortly - it alternates between twiddling thumbs and manic here.
01 July, 2010
Will the baby cry less and sleep more if we have him in the bed with us?
What has been called "attachment parenting"* has become ever so trendy in recent years and for a lot of parents of very young infants there is a whole set of things that goes together under this heading. This tends to include breastfeeding on demand, sleeping in a family bed, carrying in a sling for a lot of the day, and responding very quickly when infants cry - never leaving them to cry when nothing obvious is wrong. Another group of parents - again hugely stereotyping here - go more for scheduled feeding, own bed, and putting in a baby seat or buggy rather than carrying the baby in a sling.
It's pretty hard to randomise parents to different groups and tell one "right, you lot sleep with baby in the bed but use a pushchair and feed on a schedule, and you lot over there, let's have feeding on demand but even if you think it's part of the package, don't have them in the bed with you or carry them in a sling".
However, infants in most cultures cry a lot and parents complain of them crying a lot, especially in the first three months. So it's probably safe to say that parents in two different European countries are both going to be complaining of infants crying and if they it might be helpful to compare how much the babies cry if infant care practices are different.
In fact, it turns out they are - the two stereotyped groups I've described above are both groups found commonly in the UK but in Denmark, practices are a little different - even parents who don't sleep in a family bed or feed on demand, tend to hold or carry the baby for longer each day. So it's possible to separate the effect of sleeping in a family bed and feeding on demand (the "attachment parenting" or "non-conformist", mainly UK group) from the effect of a high level of responsiveness and carrying (the Danish group).
What the study found was that it was the carrying and responsiveness - as practiced by "mainstream" Danish mothers - that led to less crying during the day and evening (and it's the evening crying that parents find so wearing). Sleeping together in one bed in particular didn't help crying or sleeping through the night. In fact, sleeping in one bed added on to carrying/holding made infants less likely to have a settled, all-night sleep with little crying by 3 months.
What was also interesting was that extreme crying - "colic", which really seems to have little to do with the digestive system - was no different between the groups. So "regular" cryers cry less in the daytime if they are held more, more at night if they are in a family bed, but "extreme" cryers are not a result of anything parents have or have not done. Frustrating if you have one of them, but a little bit reassuring if you are worried you are doing something wrong.
*It's a very distinct style of parenting which some parents prefer but there's no evidence it has much to do with attachment - I'm going to be writing on that shortly** so bear with me.
**i.e. some time this millennium
If you are interested:
Pediatrics. 2006 Jun;117(6):e1146-55. Infant crying and sleeping in London, Copenhagen and when parents adopt a "proximal" form of care. St James-Roberts I, Alvarez M, Csipke E, Abramsky T, Goodwin J, Sorgenfrei E.
It's pretty hard to randomise parents to different groups and tell one "right, you lot sleep with baby in the bed but use a pushchair and feed on a schedule, and you lot over there, let's have feeding on demand but even if you think it's part of the package, don't have them in the bed with you or carry them in a sling".
However, infants in most cultures cry a lot and parents complain of them crying a lot, especially in the first three months. So it's probably safe to say that parents in two different European countries are both going to be complaining of infants crying and if they it might be helpful to compare how much the babies cry if infant care practices are different.
In fact, it turns out they are - the two stereotyped groups I've described above are both groups found commonly in the UK but in Denmark, practices are a little different - even parents who don't sleep in a family bed or feed on demand, tend to hold or carry the baby for longer each day. So it's possible to separate the effect of sleeping in a family bed and feeding on demand (the "attachment parenting" or "non-conformist", mainly UK group) from the effect of a high level of responsiveness and carrying (the Danish group).
What the study found was that it was the carrying and responsiveness - as practiced by "mainstream" Danish mothers - that led to less crying during the day and evening (and it's the evening crying that parents find so wearing). Sleeping together in one bed in particular didn't help crying or sleeping through the night. In fact, sleeping in one bed added on to carrying/holding made infants less likely to have a settled, all-night sleep with little crying by 3 months.
What was also interesting was that extreme crying - "colic", which really seems to have little to do with the digestive system - was no different between the groups. So "regular" cryers cry less in the daytime if they are held more, more at night if they are in a family bed, but "extreme" cryers are not a result of anything parents have or have not done. Frustrating if you have one of them, but a little bit reassuring if you are worried you are doing something wrong.
*It's a very distinct style of parenting which some parents prefer but there's no evidence it has much to do with attachment - I'm going to be writing on that shortly** so bear with me.
**i.e. some time this millennium
If you are interested:
Pediatrics. 2006 Jun;117(6):e1146-55. Infant crying and sleeping in London, Copenhagen and when parents adopt a "proximal" form of care. St James-Roberts I, Alvarez M, Csipke E, Abramsky T, Goodwin J, Sorgenfrei E.
07 June, 2010
Own goal?
As an experiment, I've enabled AdSense on my blog (not that I'm anticipating major revenue nor indeed any particular increase in traffic, but just in case).
I note that half my ads so far (out of a microscopic sample size, a phrase including the words "fingers", "hands" and "both" springs to mind) are for unproven parenting products and untested (or tested-and-found-wanting) therapeutic materials for children with disabilities. I sense some bloggy material... let me just add a draft post along the lines of "dodgy therapies and why parents fall for them".
I note that half my ads so far (out of a microscopic sample size, a phrase including the words "fingers", "hands" and "both" springs to mind) are for unproven parenting products and untested (or tested-and-found-wanting) therapeutic materials for children with disabilities. I sense some bloggy material... let me just add a draft post along the lines of "dodgy therapies and why parents fall for them".
25 March, 2010
Why do some children stop believing in Father Christmas?
I have to confess to a slight obsession with this subject - I suspect because of my own difficulty with the concept (my parents never set anything up to make me believe in Father Christmas) and also a slight scepticism about who, exactly, parents are doing it for - though many parents would admit they want their children to carry on believing for their own sake, not the children's sake.
A fascinating area of research has been following children's response to an invented fantasy character, the Candy Witch, who is kind, visits at Halloween, and gives you toys if you leave out some sweets for her. For younger children (4-5-ish) generally children tended to believe she was real - the more other make-believe figures they believed in, the more likely they were to believe. Children didn't need "backup" in the form of a parent-organised "visit" if they believed in a lot of other fantasy figures.
By the time children are 7 or 8 few of them believed in a lot of other fantasy figures (Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy etc.), but if they did, and they got a "visit", they were more likely to believe in the Candy Witch. It seems as if, should parents wish to keep the belief in fantasy figures alive in older children, they are going to need to put a lot more effort into it, and provide a lot more "evidence" that Father Christmas really exists.
Although some people (Richard Dawkins, I'm looking at you) think that children are really quite credible, and will believe more or less what their parents tell them, without any evidence, in fact children do seem to need evidence - they are not as credible as some people would like to think.
If you're interested:
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